"SIXTY?!"
– Eldog (2025)
pencilvoid is a public menace
– Superstarxalien (2025)
I'm not usually one for jams. I'm a pretty slow worker by my own admission, and deadlines stress me out just as much as they motivate me. So I don't really remember why I thought participating in the cerv.id classic was a good idea.
I guess I just wanted some motivation to do something? This year I've been trying to worry less and do more, which resulted in the weekly drawing series. The cerv.id classic asked me to produce a functional (and hopefully fun) custom level for Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers, a kart racer high in technical complexity, built on Sonic Robo Blast 2, which itself is built on the original Doom's engine. Making levels for an engine that goes back over 30 years is definitely An Experience.
Concepting
I decided the first thing to do was think of a visual theme, which proved to be a bit difficult on such short notice. I had some vague ideas of a more moody aesthetic, taking place indoors, with a kind of clinical appearance, but no specific setpieces came to mind except for one. At the time I figured this was no matter. Then the jam prompt rolled around.
Your submission must be both a functional Race and Battle map!
Needless to say I was a little intimidated...
Race and Battle are the two primary game modes in Ring Racers. Race is, as you'd expect, racing. Do laps around a course faster than everyone else, while dodging hazards from the track and other racers. Battle is player-versus-player arena combat, similar to Battle in the Mario Kart series. Drive around a relatively small arena, using items to beat up other players and chasing down UFOs which give you special power-ups when you strike them. At this point in time I was already aware that a level could hypothetically support both game modes but I had no idea what such a level would look like. It didn't help that I hadn't (and still haven't as of writing!!) played a single round of Battle in my life.
The layout
I managed to produce some simple layout concepts on the day the theme was revealed. My initial strategy was creating a track that circled around more open rooms; the track would be for Race and the open room would be for Battle. Seemed simple enough.
As always, the music was locked in from the get-go: de_cache by BLKSMIITH. I tend to pick music early as for me it helps guiding the visuals and pacing of the level. This music was more aligned with the initial concept I had in mind, which I ended up not executing exactly as I pictured it, but I think it still ended up fitting the level well.
For quite a while, the rooms you see in figures 1 and 2 were the entire level. It was proving difficult to force myself to come up with setpiece ideas. Eventually, I decided to try borrowing a setpiece from an existing level I liked. I followed up those rooms with two thin paths arranged side by side in a "wave" shape, inspired by a similar room in Ring Racers' Marble Garden Zone. From there the path split continues with some other ideas that came to mind, like a wall ride and a jump with trick panels, a special type of spring panel which start a quick time event which lets the player dash in a certain direction.
Around this point the design philosophy begain to crystallise. The level played into claustrophobic and awkward to traverse roads, with sparse rings and boosts to help you up steep slopes or past awkward jumps.
After the previous rooms came the map's centrepiece, which has been lovingly described as the "really thin fuck you section".
The path is about one player wide, but you could fit two players side by side if you tried. There were also no rings initially, and the green sneaker panels on the second part force you to boost right before a sharp turn. I hope that the name bestowed upon it is becoming clearer.
My main motivation for this part was just that I wanted the level to be harder, and felt like doing something players would balk at since I had already attained some sort of status as the guy who makes Hard Levels. I'm aware that a level you made will inherently be easier to you, but I still felt like it could use some spice. At the time, falling off the path would just drop you back on, but unlike the rest of the level, you wouldn't automatically advance any further. You have to complete the entire thing...
This room sort of ended up crystallising the level's design philosophy, in a serendipitous way. In Eldog's words...
"When you think about it this is the truest form of skill expression... the track is your enemy."
As an aside, I don't really recall thinking about how this room would be experienced in Battle mode. I did make sure it could be traversed in both directions, so there's something...
After this, the layout was coming close to completion but I needed one or two more rooms to close the loop. I felt that the design style had changed a bit as the layout progressed, so I wanted to bring it back together. The next room used the same style as the first one, with a path circling around an empty space in the centre. This is also where I put the map's centrepiece.
If this site's landing page didn't clue you in already, I subscribe to the idea that Giant Spinning Shapes Are Cool. I felt that the level could use some visual flair, since at this point it was clear I wouldn't be able to draw the level's textures in time for submission, so I spent a few hours putting the sprites together for this (which was relatively easy) and programming it (which was relatively hard). Doom engine, being over 30 years old, doesn't provide functionality for 3D models, so to create something like this and make it functional in the Software rendering engine I had to make each side of the octahedron a separate entity. This object is actually related to my OC setting I've been working on for a few years, but I can talk about that in its own post...
After this room, it was fairly straightforward. A simple downward slope and a jump connected it up to the start of the level, and the circuit was complete! Configuring the map for Battle was relatively simple too. All I needed to do was place a few Battle-specific objects (some sixty-odd prison capsules) and write some scripts to let the level automatically adjust itself to be more playable in Battle mode. All in all, I managed to submit the level a couple days before the deadline.
After the showcase
The reactions to the level were about as I expected. It was fun watching bots try their very hardest to complete the level and just barely making it in the end.
We had some time to clean up and improve on our submissions based on the feedback given in the showcase. Around mid-February, Eldog floated an idea by me on Discord...
Wait... can I float a suggestion by you
What if you made that floor the like... Wacky Workbench bouncy floor
that fucking shoots you up at a million miles per hour
and then made the ceiling instant death
so you get one chance to recover with fastfall before you die
if you're lucky
I put together a script for it in about 15 minutes, and initial results were interesting.
This gimmick ended up being really fun to use, enough so that I sprinked it in around other parts of the map. It has this unpredictableness to it that I think ended up fitting the level and the game as a whole really well.
Looking back
I feel that overall, this endeavour went surprisingly well. I didn't get to execute the aesthetics the way I initially planned, but I think the intent of the level concept came across well. Funnily enough, in the livestream chat during the showcase some people proposed visual themes that were surprisingly similar to the concept I initially thought of.
My biggest mistake was probably not planning ahead as much as I could have. A substantial amount of the month was spent sitting around thinking of level setpieces, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not ideal when you have a deadline. For any newer mappers reading this, I would suggest to try and think of at least a few setpieces beforehand when you're concepting a level. Having a clear idea of how you want your level to feel to players will help a lot for guiding your hand.
As of writing, the updated version of the level with the new gimmick has been submitted and will be available for everyone to play alongside every other participant's submissions too. Look forward to enjoying everyone's levels!
Terminology
- Setpiece
- A short section of the level which presents a specific focus to players, such as a tricky path to traverse. A level can be considered a bunch of setpieces chained together
- Spring panel
- A type of floor in the game which launches the player into the air upon touching it.
- Trick panel
- A special type of spring panel which starts a QTE. Completing the QTE allows the player to dash forwards, upwards, or to the side.
- Rings
- Items in the game which players can pick up and use for a small speed boost.
- Sneaker panel
- A type of floor which grants a stronger boost when a player drives onto it.
- Prison Break
- A minigame taking place in Battle mode, where players have to hit prison capsules spread across the map on a time limit.
- Prison capsule
- The targets in Prison Break.